After the End
by jewelwhisperer
Summary: She felt the life go out of him and knew it was the end. And then suddenly everything began again. For Rapunzel and even Eugene, life would insist upon going on. T for later chapters.
1. Chapter 1

It began at the end.

Rapunzel tried to bite back the panic rising in her throat, clutching Eugene's vest, strands of hair caught between her fingers. His breath was shaking as his fingers brushed her cheek. "You were my new dream," he whispered.

"And you were mine," she answered. What else was there to say? In the hours of pain since Mother had brought her back to the tower, Rapunzel had imagined thousands of possibilities for the future. Escaping the tower, exploring the world, and even finding her true family…she had envisioned every scene with Eugene by her side. She could not imagine leaving the tower without him, and suddenly he had reappeared; but just as quickly, she was alone.

His hand fell from her face and his face, already pale, turned ashen. His brown eyes disappeared behind heavy lids and something in his body changed, something in the weight of him beneath her hands. She hadn't realized how his muscles had been straining—toward what?—until they weren't any longer. His body was nothing but weight, and she knew. Although she'd never seen it, had only read brief snippets, she knew. He was gone.

She could not describe what she was feeling at that moment, as fear, desperation, and grief fought for precedence. Tears fell in hot tracks down her cheeks. The strands of long, brown hair tangled between her fingers felt familiar and foreign all at once, as if her hair had once been as living as the man before her, and was now just as dead. How many times had she taken the hair to an injury, singing the words, never understanding the consequences of wounds when they could not be healed? The song rose unbidden to her lips and she sang, choking out the words as though they still had power.

The moments dragged on as she cried, and she knew her tears were falling but couldn't care. Why couldn't she have healed him? Why would he cut her hair before being healed? Why did he make the choice between the two?

And then, heat blossomed underneath her palm as it tried fruitlessly to staunch the bleeding through his vest. And light. Golden light flowing, like water, curling through the air, and Rapunzel fell back, watching as it lit up the wound on Eugene's torso. What on earth? She had never seen anything like it. The light flew up into the shape of a sun, a flower, the emblem of Corona, and then, just as suddenly as it had appeared, it dissipated around the room.

There was a tiny breath and Rapunzel's heart almost stopped in anticipation. Tiny splotches of pink colored Eugene's cheekbones. Wasn't he ashen pale before? Could it be?

His eyes fluttered open. Her heart missed a beat.

"Eugene?"

His voice answered, soft but strong. "Rapunzel?"

"Eugene!" Joy bubbled up, plowing over the grief in her chest, and he was _alive_. Without thinking she threw herself over him, falling farther than she had meant to, but his hand was there to catch her. It was a strong and sure as it had always been and he buried his face in her shoulder for a brief moment.

"Did I ever tell you I have a thing for brunettes?"

Rapunzel could not believe what she was seeing; his eyes meeting hers and the small smile on his lips. His lips. She suppressed a giggle and instead planted her lips on his. He stiffened and then almost immediately relaxed, holding her close, kissing her over and over.

And for a moment everything felt perfect.

But it was only a moment.


	2. Chapter 2

She spent almost an hour looking out the window, Pascal on her shoulder, looking down at what remained of Mother Gothel—nothing.

Eugene watched her carefully, trying to understand grief in the face of such betrayal. He kept reminding himself that whatever had happened between Rapunzel and Gothel over the last few days, Gothel was still her mother. He had never had a mother, or a father, and he knew he couldn't see things from Rapunzel's point of view. He would just have to wait for her to work through it.

In the meantime, he had bigger problems to worry about. Here he was, a complete criminal who had escaped from the kingdom's dungeons and a death sentence, with a girl who knew next to nothing of life outside the tower. What was the next step? Rapunzel had nothing, except the tower, and he had even less. There was nowhere to go. They couldn't stay in the tower. He wasn't sure at all what to do.

Rapunzel turned into the room, her eyes blood-shot from crying, but she offered him a little smile. "We should clean this place up," she said, moving toward him.

"No," he said suddenly, looking down. "Don't move. The glass…you're barefoot."

"Oh." They both looked at her feet. One of them was already bleeding. "There's a broom in the cupboard."

He retrieved the broom and started sweeping the glass to one side. Rapunzel picked up the end of her hair, now dead and brown, and held it close, like a teddy bear. Pascal ran down the length and settled on a cushion that had fallen to the floor, watching. Her voice was small and tiny when she spoke. "Why did you have to cut it?"

He hardly knew himself. Setting the broom aside, he took the hair and dropped it again, taking her hands in his. "Your hair, Rapunzel, it would always put you in danger. People would always want it—people like Gothel. People who would use it for terrible things. Your hair, it kept you locked away in this tower for eighteen years. It kept you from the world."

"But it was such a gift," she responded. "I could have used it for good, too."

"I know," he sighed. "But you can't save everyone—and I had to save you." He pulled her close into a hug and she buried her face into his shirt. "I thought that if I couldn't save you from this place, if I was going to die, I had to protect you, to give you a chance."

She choked out a laugh, harsh through her tears. "You could have at least let me heal you _before_ you cut it."

"What if I wouldn't have had the chance? Then I'd be alive just to watch you be carried off by your mother."

Rapunzel's body tensed under his hands and she stepped away. Eugene didn't honestly think she could have any tears left, but she avoided his gaze with tears brimming and instead picked up the length of her dead hair again, brown and useless in her hands. Knotting one end with practiced fingers, she tossed it into the rafters and pulled it back down, and then threw it again, and again, wrapping it around a support beam. When it got too short for her to reach, she moved to throw herself along the remaining length to climb into the rafters to finish the job, but Eugene stopped her with a hand on her shoulder. "You won't have a way to get back down," he said softly. Instead, he took the remainder and tied it tightly to the curtain around the window so it was out of the way.

Together they slowly finished cleaning up the tower, setting the broken mirror right and sweeping up the broken glass. Pascal gave up his seat in favor for Rapunzel's shoulder again, curled under the new, short hair.

Inside, Rapunzel was utterly and completely confused. Losing the only mother she had ever had felt like her heart was breaking, but discovering that the same mother was not her mother at all had already shattered it. It felt like she had lost everything—a past, a mother—in the same moment she had gained everything—a family, Eugene, a chance at a real life.

And, at the bottom of it all, how was she going to tell Eugene? How could she possibly convince him that she was the lost princess? He would have to take her word for it, but seeing as how he was supposed to be in the palace dungeons awaiting execution, she strongly suspected that it would be no small feat to draw him back to the kingdom.

And, after all, how was it that Eugene was not in the palace dungeons awaiting execution?

And she remembered that the last time she had seen him, he had been running away on a ship, crown in hand, abandoning her to the force that was the Stabbington brothers. Rapunzel felt like she was not entirely sure what had happened in the last two days.

It seemed that they both had a lot of explaining to do.

After the tower had been cleaned of the chaos, Rapunzel did what she had always done when nervous: she rummaged through the cupboards and the ice box and set down to cook something. Flipping through recipes, she looked up at Eugene, settling into a seat at the kitchen table. "What should I make? What are you hungry for?"

He looked down at the recipe book she had in her hands and his stomach grumbled. He hadn't eaten since stealing cupcakes in the kingdom square—he had been too late for dinner in the dungeons and the palace could save their budget by executing prisoners bright and early, and not serving them breakfast. "It's still early," he said slowly, "Only what, noon?"

"Two," Rapunzel answered, looking at a small clock settled on the counter.

"We'll pretend it's only noon. Let's do pancakes." Pancakes were easy, so they could talk while making them, and it was always breakfast as long as it was the first meal of the day.

Rapunzel cocked an eyebrow, questioning, but eventually just sighed and began pulling out the flour and eggs and other ingredients. She threw everything into a mixing bowl and handed it to him with a spatula, and settled Pascal onto the table next to everything. Eugene began to stir as she buttered her frying pan.

"So," Rapunzel said, turning to him, "how did you get here?"

"Fate," he shot back instinctively. "Destiny."

"Or was it a horse?" She asked. "Is Max here, too?"

They both looked at each other and, for the first time all day, laughed.

"Yeah, he's keeping watch out there somewhere," Eugene answered. "He organized a stylishly outrageous getaway, he's very good." He paused. Rapunzel looked away. "In all seriousness, though. The Stabbingtons were on the beach, they were there watching us. Creepy, really. I went to hand back the crown, let them get away with whatever, just so they'd leave me alone. I just wanted to leave it behind and go do something better, right? But they knew. They knew about your hair, they were going to have people pay to use it, and the next thing I knew I was strapped up to a mast running into the palace docks."

"They came for me," Rapunzel said, pouring pancake batter into the frying pan. "I saw you sailing away."

"You have to know that that wasn't my choice. Never. Not after everything."

She shook herself, like casting off her doubts. "I know. But they were there. I tried to run, I'm not sure what happened, but then Mother—I mean, Gothel, she was there, she had hit them, we got away."

"And I was arrested. Spent the night in prison. Watched the guards hang up the noose and everything, but as they were taking me down, the thugs were there."

"The thugs? The Snuggling Duckling ruffians?" Pascal, on the table, turned yellow and stuck his tongue out in happiness.

"Yes! Maximus had brought them all. It was amazing, the guards didn't even know what to do, then suddenly I was like flying through the air and landed right on Max and I was here."

Rapunzel's eyes shown with pride as she flipped a pancake onto a plate. "What darlings," she sighed, pouring more batter into the pan.

There was a quiet moment as Rapunzel went through the rest of the batter and served a towering pile of pancakes. She tossed one to Pascal and found some maple syrup, drenching the platter and throwing a fork to Eugene.

"You didn't seem to be doing to hot yourself when I got here," Eugene noted, his mouth full of hot pancake. "When did you know, when did you figure out that she wasn't, you know, a fantastic mother?"

"As it turns out," Rapunzel said, "She wasn't my mother at all."

She looked up, meeting his confused eyes._ Quickly_, she thought, _say it quickly and it won't be so hard to get out all the words._

"I'm the lost princess."


End file.
